Watching the world of east London politics

Dow Chemical – Ken Livingstone to enter the fray

Further to my last post, you’ll also see on that two-page spread on the Olympics in today’s Sunday Express, a couple of other pieces on the Dow Chemical issue. Regular readers will know that I was pretty much a lone obsessive voice covering this story since the deal with Locog was signed in August. In the last week or so, everyone’s covering it, which is fantastic.

Tessa Jowell is flying to India this week, and Lord Coe probably will as well to lobby the Indian Olympic Association before its vote on a possible boycott on December 5. That date is just two days after the 27th anniversary of the 1984 disaster. I’d like to see Coe’s mirror that day.

As today’s article makes clear, Britain’s Olympic bosses felt they were put in an impossible position by Dow’s position as a global partner of the International Olympic Committee. After all, how could Locog reject Dow’s offer to pay for the wrap?? What would they tell IOC chief Jaques Rogge – that Dow wasn’t suitable?

Well, yes, quite frankly. Coe showed balls as an athlete, but as a politician, for that’s what he is remember (with designs in running World Athletics), he’s a choker.

But the question of who should pay for the wrap just shouldn’t have arisen. As my commentary below suggests, there is something very coincidental about the timings. Why did Coe decide to drop the wrap? Yes, the Government was asking for £20million savings as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review, but why did they choose the wrap when it was so obviously needed in their later view? They could have saved such a trifling some easily elsewhere, for a start in Paul Deighton’s annual bonuses.

No, the suspicion among many is that the wrap was a stitch-up, if you’ll pardon the pun. Dow had just paid the IOC a great deal of money and it wanted an involvement in 2012. So they got exclusive marketing rights to the stadium.

These, and more, are questions that politicians will continue to ask even if, as I suspect, the Indian Olympic Association, votes not to boycott and provides Coe with some much-needed tonic.